ChangeLog

Version 2.1.0
-------------
[2009-01-07]

- Rewrote several key subsystems in the MPV, including:
    - Entities, articulations, component controls
    - Coordinate conversion
    - Terrain databases
    - Mission functions processing

- Boost is now a mandatory requirement of the MPV.  The XLObject code 
  has been removed.

- Removed the Visual Studio project files and the autoconf/automake build 
  files, as they are no longer maintained.  This completes the transition 
  to CMake as the sole build system for the MPV.  Many thanks go to P. Lowman 
  for making this possible.

- Implemented more of the CIGI Symbology interface.  All symbol geometry 
  types are implemented (including all variants of circles).  Fonts can 
  be specified for text symbols.  Entity-attached symbol surfaces are 
  partially implemented.  Also implemented is symbol cloning, symbol 
  redefinition, and symbol surface redefinition.  Symbology features that 
  remain to be implemented include line stipple/width, billboarded symbol 
  surfaces, and IG-defined symbols.

- Many of the MPV's components have been relicensed under the LGPL, as part 
  of the rewrite effort.

This release of the MPV is the result of a significant rewrite, and as such 
many things have changed.  There has been some regressions; the most notable 
features that have been dropped are:
  - weather state tracking
  - rate (velocity) handling for entities and articulations
  - entity position request handling
It is planned that these features will gradually be re-implemented/re-enabled, 
but there is no timetable for that effort.

Also of note is that some plugins have been renamed, split up, or removed.
As such, remember to UPDATE YOUR CONFIG FILES!  Use the files in deffilesamples 
as a guide.


Version 2.0.0
-------------
[2008-04-01]

- Implemented the new CIGI symbology interface.  The symbology management code 
  makes use of the xlobject reference-counting and signal/slot mechanism.  
  The new plugins are pluginSymbologyMgr and pluginRenderSymbologyCigiOSG.
  The CIGI symbology code has support for text, circle, and line symbols.  
  View-attached symbol surfaces are implemented, but entity-attached surfaces 
  are not.  Most of the symbol features are implemented (nesting, flashing, 
  color, rotation, translation, scaling, layering, creation, destruction, 
  etc).  Features not yet implemented include line stipple/width, text fonts, 
  and certain types of geometry (circles with holes, maybe a few others).

- CMake support has been improved.  It is now the preferred system for 
  building the MPV on Linux.  This release is likely the last to include 
  support for autoconf/automake.  

- Ported to OSG 2.2.  OSG 1.x is no longer supported.  Credit goes to 
  J. Mauroff for the original OSG 2.2 patch.

- Fixed bug 1801740 on sourceforge ("MPV shouldn't process CIGI packets 
  in certain states").  

- Cleaned up the particle system code.  The partsys.def format has changed.  
  Particle systems should be easier to configure now.

- Added more display test patterns.  Keys F9, F10 and F11 cycle through the 
  available test patterns.

- Fixed several bugs in the articulated part rendering code.  Credit goes to 
  P. Lowman for this.

- The MPV now builds on Windows again.


Version 1.99.2 beta
-------------------
[2008-01-29]

This release is particularly rough around the edges.  Ordinarily, more cleanup 
would go into a release.  However, I've waited too long since the previous 
release, and there are some big changes on the way, so a release had to be 
made.

- Support for the CMake build system has been added.  Credit goes to P. Lowman 
  of General Dynamics Land Systems for this contribution.  Currently, the MPV 
  contains build files for GNU autoconf/automake, Visual Studio project files, 
  and CMake files.  It is expected that CMake will eventually become the 
  primary (and only) build system for the MPV.

- Model loading has been moved to a separate plugin.  Update your plugins.def!

- Enhanced the statistics-rendering plugin.  The plugin can now display info 
  in addition to just the framerate.  The shortcuts for this plugin are bound 
  to the F1 through F12 keys.  F2 toggles the framerate graph.  F3 displays a 
  summary of the entity types in the scene.  F9 displays a solid color (useful 
  as a display pattern).  Press the F-key several times to cycle through 
  the available options.

- Many fixes have been made to the ephemeris system.  A bug in the date and 
  time handling code has been fixed.  The technique used to render the stars 
  has been improved.  The moon can now have a texture applied to it (oops).

- Some functionality was added to the mission functions plugin, to support a 
  specific request type.  I did not make this change; I don't know the details.

- The atmospheric plugin (fog) has been enhanced to use the global weather 
  state, as sent by the Host, when setting the fog distance.  The plugin has 
  also been changed to take the time-of-day into account when setting the 
  fog color.
  
- Fixed serious bug regarding orthographic projections.  Apparently, ortho 
  views have been broken in the MPV for about 3 years now.

- Improved handling of transparency for entities.  Formerly, the MPV would 
  clobber any material color applied to a model; this was unavoidable, as 
  OpenGL provides no way to change transparency without also changing material 
  color.  The new method only changes the transparency (and material color) 
  when an entity is not completely opaque.  This fixes the problem in the 
  most common use-case (opaque entities).

- Added a new EntityElement: TransformElement.  This allows the user to 
  specify offsets and rotations for entity elements.  It is planned that this 
  feature will eventually be expanded to allow the Host to control these 
  transforms just like articulated parts.

- The ViewParams struct has been renamed to View, and has been promoted to a 
  class.

- Cleaned up the terrain rendering plugin.

- Merged in some bugfixes for the GDLS symbology code.

- The Windows build of the MPV is broken again.


Version 1.99.1 beta
-------------------
[2007-09-24]

This release, like 1.99.0, contains drastic changes.  Many of the new features 
are untested or have not been tested extensively, so this release should be 
considered beta quality.

- The MPV kernel has been re-organized, and large portions of it have been 
  replaced.  Most significantly, the system is now controlled by a 
  state machine.  The states correspond to the states described in the CIGI 
  ICD.  As a result, the MPV more closely conforms to the CIGI standard.  This 
  new state machine also makes the database-loading process more robust, and 
  fixes a number of known bugs in the MPV.  The plugin API was modified in 
  order to accommodate the new state machine architecture; as a result, 
  every plugin has been modified to make use of the new API.

- The blackboard interface has been changed to make use of "Chameleon objects".
  Chameleon objects allow objects of heterogeneous type to be stored in a 
  container, while preserving type information.  The implementation used here 
  is from: http://www.progdoc.de/papers/chameleon/chameleon.htm
  Note that boost::any does the same thing.

- Error checking for blackboard access has been tightened.  An exception is 
  thrown if the requested entry is not found.

- A splash screen is now displayed when the MPV is in "Standby" mode.

- A leak introduced in 1.99.0, related to entity construction and deletion, has 
  been fixed.

- The MPV now compiles on Windows again.
  

Version 1.99.0 beta
-------------------
[2007-07-31]

This release contains some of the most drastic changes to the MPV in a single 
release.  Many of the new features are untested or have not been tested 
extensively, so this release should be considered beta quality.

- Merged in new mission functions plugin, from General Dynamics Land Systems.
  This plugin can process many more request types than the old plugin could:
      * Line of Sight Vector Request 
      * Line of Sight Segment Request 
      * Line of Sight Response 
      * HAT/HOT Request 
      * HAT/HOT Response 
      * HAT/HOT Extended Response 
  This new plugin has some interesting debugging features (see 
  missionFunctions.def) and is licensed under the more permissive LGPL (the 
  old plugin was licensed under the GPL).

- The mechanism by which entity scene graphs are constructed has been rewritten.
  The new mechanism is much more flexible and is easier to use.  It has 
  permitted a more CIGI-compliant implementation for handling animations.  The 
  new mechanism has required extensive cleanup and modification to the 
  entity rendering and management plugins, and the addition of a new helper 
  library, commonOSG.  The most obvious user-visible difference is that the 
  entity configuration is now performed with a single configuration file, 
  rather than two files as it was previously.  
  
- The MPV is now capable of generating positional audio (3d sound).  It uses 
  the osgAL nodekit (http://www.vrlab.umu.se/research/osgAL/).  This is perhaps 
  the first time that CIGI has been used to generate aural cues, rather than 
  visual cues.  Be aware that the audio plugins are currently experimental, 
  and that compiling osgAL can be a difficult process.

- The jump in version number, from 1.6.3 to 1.99.0, is to reflect that 
  significant changes to the MPV are pending.  The next version of the 
  MPV, 1.99.1, will feature a new plugin API that is incompatible with 
  the original API.  Information on the roadmap toward 2.0 can be found 
  at: http://cigi.wiki.sourceforge.net/mpv-plan

- The Windows build files will not work for this release, as they have again 
  become out-of-date.


Version 1.6.3
-------------
[2007-05-03]

Merged in patches from P. Lowman, which fix a number of 
issues in the new symbology code.

Merged in patch from B. Bauer, which adds streaming JPEG 
to pluginVideoCapture.


Version 1.6.2
-------------
[2007-04-05]

This release includes Visual Studio build files that were 
accidentally left out of the 1.6.1 release.

This release also includes some experimental new plugins 
from General Dynamics Land Systems for rendering symbology. 
"Symbology" here refers to HUD graphics and the like. The 
MPV has always had the ability to add HUD symbology to the 
scene, but doing so required writing a new 
application-specific plugin for each new HUD type/host 
application. This new symbology system uses the CIGI 
protocol itself to send the symbology control messages, and 
presents the host with a generic, re-usable symbology 
interface. At the moment, the best way to learn more about 
the symbology protocol interface is to examine the code; we 
hope to prepare a document describing the interface for the 
next release.


Version 1.6.1
-------------
[2007-02-16]

- This version has working build files for Visual Studio 
  (1.6.0beta did not).

- A new plugin has been added, pluginVideoCapture, which 
  allows the user to capture MPEG video of the MPV in 
  action.  The MPEG feature requires the FFMPEG libraries.  
  This plugin can take screenshots too, and the screenshot 
  feature doesn't require FFMPEG.  See videoCapture.def to 
  configure this plugin.

- Merged in fixes from sourceforge forum for compiling with 
  latest GCC.

- Added license information for every plugin.

- The license has been changed to the LGPL for several 
  plugins.  This is the beginning of an effort to move the 
  entire MPV (or at least as much as possible) from the GPL 
  to the LGPL.  The plugins licensed under the LGPL are: 

    * pluginMotionTrackerJoystick
    * pluginRenderEntsLabelsOSG
    * pluginRenderTV
    * pluginUserInputMgrOSGGA
    * pluginVideoCapture

- The build system has been cleaned up; in addition to an 
  number of smaller fixes, the build system now checks for 
  OSG.

- LibLTDL is no longer an external dependency; a copy of 
  libltdl is now distributed with the MPV.


Version 1.6.0 beta
-------------
[2006-12-04]

This version of the MPV is of beta quality.  It has not 
received the amount of testing that the 1.5 series has.  
Also, it won't compile on Windows; there have been many 
changes to the directory structure, and the Visual Studio 
files haven't been updated.  I expect that we'll make 
another release in two weeks, with working VS build files, 
etc.

Changes: 

Merged patches from P. Lowman:

  -  allow plugins to throw exceptions in the init() method
  -  allow plugins to register user-defined packets
  -  fixes to osgSDL for osg 1.1
  -  take screen shots, including continuous capture (for 
     making movies)

The screen shot feature is much appreciated.  To take a 
shot, press the 's' key.  To start continuous capturing, hit 
shift-s.  Be prepared for the frame rate to drop 
significantly when capturing continuously.

Split up the camera plugin.  This should make the system 
easier to maintain, and promote reuse.  

Added a plugin to allow the Host to control the scale of an 
entity via a component control.  The interface is compatible 
with the Quantum3d CIGI extension for doing the same.

Fixed bugs in the ephemeris system.

Fixed bugs in the build system for pluginRenderTV.

Added brief descriptions for the plugins, with info on how 
the plugins should be ordered, to the config file.


Version 1.5.3
-------------
[2006-09-26]

- Fixed the timing mechanism on 64bit AMD/Intel systems.

- Fixed a bug that prevented the MPV from compiling on 
  Windows.

- SDL initialization errors are now printed when they are 
  encountered, along with an informative message which 
  should better explain some of the more common errors.

- Added a configuration flag to disable use of the joystick.

- The view.def configuration file has been changed slightly. 
  The window resolution parameters have been moved to their 
  own section. Make sure you update your def files!
  

Version 1.5.2
-------------
[2006-08-24]

Made changes to timer and network classes to ease 
compilation on cygwin.  The MPV still doesn't work on 
cygwin, but this improves the situation a little.

Improved memory usage for particle systems.

Merged in patch from P. Lowman which enables stereo visuals 
(shutter glasses, red-blue, etc.)  Support for this feature 
is dependant on your GL driver and video card.

Entity labels now default to the entity type string, unless 
the Host changes the label with a component control.

Changed the frame rate graph.

Added tv capture plugin.  This plugin will capture video 
from a TV tuner card (or similar device; anything supported 
by Video4Linux should work) and place the output in a 
texture.  That texture is applied to a quad, which is placed 
in the background of the scene.  Possible applications of 
this feature include augmented reality.  This plugin was 
implemented by D. Fries.

Improved sanity checking for the view parameters.

Version 1.0 of OSG will work with this release; version 1.1 will not.


Version 1.5.1
-------------
[2006-06-06]

Release notes for MPV-1.5.1:

- The MPV now has an ephemeris system.  Ephemeris refers to 
  the motion of celestial bodies; in short, this feature 
  means that the MPV can now display the sun, moon and stars 
  in the correct positions in the sky, given the time of 
  day, time of year, and latitude and longitude of the 
  viewer. The ephemeris plugins still need some work:
    - the lat/lon are hard-coded, rather than retrieved from 
      the ownship's position
    - the time of day is retrieved from the system clock 
      rather than the Host

- Bug fixes:
    - database switches were causing a big performance hit; 
      tracked it down to a bug in the camera code
    - deleting the ownship before switching would cause a 
      crash
    - any failure to initialize SDL would cause a crash

- A new plugin has been added for putting text labels on top 
  of entities. The label contents can be set by the Host, 
  via a component control packet. This feature could be 
  useful for displaying nicknames/callsigns, entity type 
  info, debugging info, etc.

- This version of the MPV should work with OSG 1.0.

- Terrain now has blending enabled; databases with trees and 
  such should now look better.

- The joystick-motion-tracker plugin is now configurable for 
  any joystick through the config files.


Version 1.5.0 beta
-------------
[2006-04-27]

This release of the MPV should be considered BETA quality. 
It has not undergone the amount of testing that, for 
example, 1.4.0 has.

The highlights for this release are:

Changed entity subsystem; deleted entities are moved to a 
separate list upon deletion. This fixes the known bug where 
an entity ID could not be re-used immediately after deleting 
the entity associated with it.

Implemented a basic weather manager. The weather data sent 
by the Host is processed, but there is no accompanying 
render plugin to display the weather effects.

Cleaned up the coordinate conversion plugin interface.

Added a plugin for faking a motion tracker by using a 
joystick.

Added a plugin for performing mission function calculations 
(pluginMissionFuncsOSG - untested).

Incorporated patches submitted by users: 
    - static lighting plugin is now configurable via def 
      file
    - entities with no entry in entityVisuals.def can now 
      have a model associated with them (feature is 
      currently broken)

Began work on an ephemeris system.


Version 1.4.0
-------------
[10.11.2005]

Changes/Additions: 
------------------

- Motion tracker support has been re-organized and improved.

- Improvements have been made to database switching.


Version 1.3.0
-------------
[08.23.2005]

Changes/Additions: 
------------------

- Now works on 64-bit systems (tested on RedHat 
  FC4 AMD64).

- Ported to OSG 0.9.9.

- Compiles on Windows.

- MPV User's Guide updated for version 1.3.0.


Version 1.2.0
-------------
[06.30.2005]

Changes/Additions: 
------------------

- Bugs have been fixed.

- New plugins have been added.

- The process by which entities are inserted into the 
  scene has been re-worked, to allow much more 
  flexibility in how entities are represented.

- Windows support has been improved, but the 
  Visual Studio build files have fallen behind the 
  Linux build files again.

- This release has only been tested with OSG 0.9.8.2. 
  OSG 0.9.9 support is forthcoming.


Version 1.1.0
-------------
[02.04.2005]

Changes/Additions: 
------------------

- The MPV is now stable and working on Windows. 
   VisualStudio 7.1 is required.

- The code will now compile cleanly with OSG 0.9.8.

- The Linux build scripts have been improved.


Version 1.0.0
-------------
[12.15.2004]

- Initial Release